Angst

Like James Dean smoking and brooding through Rebel Without a Cause, Robert Pattinson puffs and sulks - often, impressively, at the same time - in the intense romantic drama Remember Me . Twilight's pale and immortal lover boy, adopting a New York accent and a slouchy demeanor (the better to reflect his directionlessness by!), is rich kid Tyler Hawkins, an NYU mopester who meets a girl from his global politics class and woos her accordingly. Actually, it's a cynical game Tyler's playing: Egged on by his roommate, Aidan (Tate Ellington)

A trio of earnest, searching, and not terribly sophisticated short films about the angst experienced by gay teenagers, Boys Life addresses issues of sexual identity, peer pressure, young love (and lust), parent-son relationships, and swimming-pool grope sessions. The three works offer similarly themed views on the confusion and catharses of young gay men coming out in America. Two of the shorts hail from NYU film-school grads, the other from an alumnus of USC's cinema program, and all take a sort of autobiographical Afterschool Special approach to the subject.

A couple of years ago, a New York artist staged a conceptual work in which viewers were issued binoculars and instructed to train them on a nearby apartment house, where a number of little dramas proceeded to unfold in selected windows. Kevin Del Aguila's 6 Story Building, which runs through Sunday in a production by the New Hope Performing Arts Festival, is rather like that piece of voyeuristic art: In six short comedies and a prologue, it peeks behind the curtains of a half-dozen apartments to survey a representative sample of urban angst and yearning.

The popularity of teen angst on TV and in films offers a steady stream of brooding young actors who walk lonely streets in long black coats, trying to emote dark feelings. Often they are so wooden that the scenes come across as trite. That's not the case with The Art of Getting By. The film is loaded with teen-angst moments that have a more realistic feel because of superb performances by Freddie Highmore and Emma Roberts. Their acting resonates with such depth that the angst isn't a dark costume slipped over the actors but a deep feeling consumed and then sweated out through every pore.

Aw, gee, I feel so sorry for those kids in their 20s, saying - as some of them are, according to recent reports - they are "stuck in a no-man's land of doubt and indecision. " There's even a new book that describes this angst: Quarterlife Crisis: The Unique Challenges of Life in Your Twenties, by a couple of 25-year-old women. When I was in my 20s, I didn't have to worry about, like, you know, what I was going to wear. My wardrobe was given to me, free, by the U.S. Army. The Army gave me all the food I could eat. It wasn't very good, but the portions were big. I remember something called Spam.

Apparently, that perpetually insecure and tormented dude that Staind singer-guitarist Aaron Lewis portrays in his band's neo-grunge songs is no act. When Lewis thanked members of the near-capacity crowd at the Electric Factory on Sunday for their continued patronage, in a somnolent monotone consistent with his singing voice (imagine comedian Steven Wright addressing a rock crowd), his brief rap was awash in self-doubt: "For some strange reason, you've allowed us to stick around and continue.

Using the medium of Wallace and Gromit and Gumby, Israeli filmmaker Tatia Rosenthal turns her clay figures into real people in $9.99 , a wise, wistful study of hope and dread. Set in and around an apartment building in an unnamed town, $9.99 was adapted from the short stories of Israeli writer Etgar Keret. His take on life is wry, and pretty dark: In the opening scene of this strikingly crafted film, a homeless man puts a gun to his head when a passerby balks at giving him a dollar.

I have lost two friends to the self-actualization movement. Both fell victim to Forum, Werner Erhardt's new, improved version of est. (Less touchy- feely, primal scream-oriented than est, Forum is a philosophy of how to get more out of life acceptable to baby boom professionals looking less for inner serenity than a kinder, gentler version of the Gordon Gecko Creed: Greed is Good.) The male friend was 40; the female, 35. Since lamenting her undeveloped breasts at age 10, she has been ahead of her chronological crisis points.

Roiling financial news - day after day after day - is stirring macro- and microeconomics into a psychic stew of stress for a lot of people. As companies that once seemed invincible keep trickling down the drain, Joe and Jane Citizen are seeing a slide in the personal investments they'd been banking on to carry them and their families through life - 30 percent loss has been an oft-cited figure for some 401(k) funds over the last few months. And that's generating the kinds of emotional responses triggered by unanticipated, uncontrollable events that shake lives and lifestyles.

THANK YOU, Rotan Lee, for articulating my own thoughts and angst about government's practice of elevating the unworthy ("A few thoughts on Malcolm & Ron"). My view is from the inside as a civil-service employee. I initially thought it was my opportunity to compete on an equal playing field to advance my career. But to my shock and deep disappointment, what I have found is a system that rewards failure, that is awash with managers and administrators who are not only self-serving and unethical but who choose those to reward based on their willingness to carry out management's agenda (albeit illegal or immoral)

Jen Lancaster is up on her high horse again. Fans of the witty memoirist are delighted to see her back in the saddle. Her just-published book, Jeneration X (NAL, $25.95) is a plea for her contemporaries to stand apart from the willfully infantile generations that bracket them -- the boomers and the millenials -- by acting like adults. "We're differentiating ourselves by becoming the only grownups in the room," says Lancaster. "We're tired of seeing all these baby boomers running around talking about their feelings and these Gen Y kids that you have to constantly coddle or they'll have a meltdown.

For Philadelphia teachers cranky about paychecks again not arriving in the mail by Friday, the School District has two words: direct deposit . "We can't guarantee delivery by the post office," district spokesman Fernando Gallard said. "If you need a check by a guaranteed time, then sign up for direct deposit. " During the week before Christmas, which fell on a Sunday, some teachers said their checks had not arrived by Friday, as they had come to expect. That meant holiday gifts weren't bought and yuletide plans were fouled.

1 The Cardinals: You don't want to face Chris Carpenter and Jaime Garcia in a short series. The Cardinals are closing the gap on the Braves for the wild card, although they had a terrible loss yesterday. St. Louis hosts the Cubs and then finishes at Houston, the team with the worst record in baseball. 2 Injuries: The injury report has played out like a game of hokeypokey this season. Put your right knee in, take your right knee out (Chase Utley), left foot (Ryan Howard)

The war between the sexes is an ancient theme, but the battle keeps going on - at least in the minds of theater artists, who mine it in plots and subplots. In the case of Robert Dubac, an altogether charming guy who is holding forth this month at Act II Playhouse in Ambler, it's a one-act, one-man exploration. He calls the show The Male Intellect: An Oxymoron? , and on the way to the theater I thought, nuts, are we going to be getting into more gender bashing, this time against guys, by a guy?

The popularity of teen angst in TV and films has resulted in a steady stream of brooding young actors who walk lonely streets in long, black coats, trying to emote dark feelings. Often they are so wooden that the scenes come across as trite. That's not the case with "The Art of Getting By. " The film is loaded with teen-angst moments that have a more realistic feel because of superb performances by Freddie Highmore and Emma Roberts. Their acting resonates with such depth that the angst isn't a dark costume slipped over the actors but a deep feeling consumed and then sweated out through every pore.

The popularity of teen angst on TV and in films offers a steady stream of brooding young actors who walk lonely streets in long black coats, trying to emote dark feelings. Often they are so wooden that the scenes come across as trite. That's not the case with The Art of Getting By. The film is loaded with teen-angst moments that have a more realistic feel because of superb performances by Freddie Highmore and Emma Roberts. Their acting resonates with such depth that the angst isn't a dark costume slipped over the actors but a deep feeling consumed and then sweated out through every pore.

By Jo Ann Beard Little, Brown & Co. 304 pp. $23.99 Reviewed by Martha Woodall 'W e can't believe the house is on fire. It's so embarrassing, first of all, and so dangerous second of all. Also, we're supposed to be in charge here, so there's a sense of somebody not doing their job. " With that tantalizing first paragraph, author Jo Ann Beard establishes the wry, observant voice of her 14-year-old narrator and ensures that smitten readers...

The primal thrill of great boxing movies - Body and Soul and The Set-Up , Rocky and Raging Bull , Million Dollar Baby and Somebody Up There Likes Me - cannot be denied. Brute force and finesse in the ring - angst and melodrama, ambition and heartbreak outside. David O. Russell's The Fighter , based on the story of real-life welterweight champ "Irish" Micky Ward and his wacko half-brother, erstwhile prizefighter Dicky Eklund, can now be added to the ranks.

Kristin Scott Thomas has a look - a vein tensing on her forehead, sunken blue eyes, down-curled lips - that screams anguish. But it's a quiet, sorrowful scream; the actress simply resonates pain, loss, despair. All she had to do in 2008's I've Loved You So Long - an extraordinary performance - was light a cigarette. She exhaled the hurt in her soul along with the smoke. In Catherine Corsini's Leaving , Scott Thomas is Suzanne, another unhappy number. Married to a physician (Yvan Attal)

By Jonah Goldberg It took 410 days to build the Empire State Building, and four years to erect the Golden Gate Bridge. The Pentagon took a year and a half, and the Alaska Highway just nine months. These days, it takes longer to build an overpass. For instance, planning for Boston's "Big Dig" officially began in the early 1980s with a budget of $2.6 billion, but ground wasn't broken until 1991, and the last ramp wasn't opened until 2006. The final estimated cost: $22 billion. According to the Boston Globe, it won't be paid off until 2038.